Scott Neuman

Scott Neuman works as a Digital News writer and editor, handling breaking news and feature stories for NPR.org. Occasionally he can be heard on-air reporting on stories for Newscasts and has done several radio features since he joined NPR in April 2007, as an editor on the Continuous News Desk.

Neuman brings to NPR years of experience as an editor and reporter at a variety of news organizations and based all over the world. For three years in Bangkok, Thailand, he served as an Associated Press Asia-Pacific desk editor. From 2000-2004, Neuman worked as a Hong Kong-based Asia editor and correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He spent the previous two years as the international desk editor at the AP, while living in New York.

As the United Press International's New Delhi-based correspondent and bureau chief, Neuman covered South Asia from 1995-1997. He worked for two years before that as a freelance radio reporter in India, filing stories for NPR, PRI and the Canadian Broadcasting System. In 1991, Neuman was a reporter at NPR Member station WILL in Champaign-Urbana, IL. He started his career working for two years as the operations director and classical music host at NPR member station WNIU/WNIJ in DeKalb/Rockford, IL.

Reporting from Pakistan immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Neuman was part of the team that earned the Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Wall Street Journal for overall coverage of 9/11 and the aftermath. Neuman shared in several awards won by AP for coverage of the December 2004 Asian tsunami.

A graduate from Purdue University, Neuman earned a Bachelor's degree in communications and electronic journalism.

Pope Francis, in a previously unannounced stop, met with victims of clergy sex abuse in Philadelphia, as the pontiff is wrapping up a six-day visit to the U.S. that will culminate with a huge Mass this afternoon.

Meeting with 300 bishops, Francis said he had met with the sex abuse survivor group Sunday morning.

"It continues to be on my mind that the people who had the responsibility to take care of these tender ones, violated that trust and caused them great pain," he said, adding "God weeps."

China's President Xi Jinping has pledged billions in aid to help the world's poorest countries implement sustainable development.

"China will continue to increase investment in the least developed countries, aiming to increase its total to $12 billion by 2030," Xi said in New York during a sustainable development summit of world leaders.

Authorities say that one of the two suspects is "yellow-shirt man" seen in a closed circuit video leaving a backpack behind moments before the deadly blast. The second man is said to have been an accomplice.

Switzerland has announced that it will temporarily halt the sale of Volkswagen diesel-engine vehicles after it was revealed earlier this month that the automaker cheated on emissions tests.

Thomas Rohrbach, spokesman for the Swiss federal office of roadways, is quoted by The Associated Press as saying that "the ban is on all cars with diesel engines in the 'euro 5' emissions category. It includes all VW models — as well as Seat, Skodas and others in the VW group."

Pope Francis, in a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, spoke of the need to preserve religious freedom throughout the world and warned against the use of religion "as a pretext for hatred and brutality."

"In this place which is symbolic of the American way, I would like to reflect with you on the right to religious freedom," he said. "It is a fundamental right which shapes the way we interact socially and personally with our neighbors whose religious views differ from our own."

Maybe you've become inured to all the superlatives that get attached to sky-watching events. But the one on Sunday really is worth a look — it's the first total eclipse that's also a supermoon and a blood moon in more than three decades.

Croatia has locked down its border with Serbia in an effort to stem the flow of thousands of refugees across the border.

Joanna Kakissis, reporting from the border region, says Serbia has closed its border to Croatians in retaliation. "Trucks are backed up for 8 miles on the highway to the border crossing at Batrovci [Serbia]," she says.

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Thursday called the European Union's quota system for member nations to share the burden of resettling migrants "seriously flawed."

Pope Francis departed Washington, D.C., this afternoon, bound for New York, the second to last stop on his U.S. tour. Once in New York, he will celebrate Vespers, an evening prayer, at St. Patrick's cathedral around 7 p.m.

Earlier today, the pontiff delivered a historic speech before a joint meeting of Congress and ate lunch with low-income and homeless people at Catholic Charities in Washington, D.C.

Pope Francis, in an address to a joint meeting of Congress, encouraged lawmakers to work together to solve the problems of ordinary Americans and to show compassion for people across the globe who are suffering from war and hunger.

Two U.S. citizens held in Yemen have been released, according to the White House. Although the names of the individuals were not immediately released by the administration, they are reportedly two businessmen from New Orleans and Michigan.

A spokesman for New Orleans-based logistics company Transoceanic Development said an employee, 45-year-old Scott Darden, was one of them. The other was identified as Sam Farran, 54, a security consultant from Michigan, according to The Washington Post. The Transoceanic spokesman said Darden had been held since March.

At least 13 migrants, including children, were killed when the dinghy they were using to cross the Aegean Sea collided with a ferry off the coast of Turkey. Another 24 refugees were missing after their boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos.

The first incident occurred near the port of Canakkale on the Turkish coast.

Despite George Stephanopoulos' best effort to press Donald Trump on the Republican front-runner's true thoughts about President Obama's birth and religion, the answers came off more as political dodges than the famous straight talk for which the GOP front-runner is famous.

On ABC's This Week today, Stephanopoulos asked Trump: "You've raised these questions so often in the past, why can't you just say definitively yes or no?"

Thousands of Cubans packed Havana's Revolution Square to celebrate Mass with Pope Francis, history's first Latin American pope, erupting in cheers as the pontiff approached in his open-sided popemobile.

Believers and non-believers waved Cuban and Vatican flags as they thronged the square, overlooked by a huge portrait of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. The pope in his homily steered clear of politics, but focused on the need for Christians and others to help their fellow man.

Supporters of former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' Syriza party cheered and waved flags in the capital after the leftist party won a convincing victory over the conservative New Democracy party in snap elections.

With more than 99 percent of the ballots counted, Syriza had 35.5 percent of the vote, compared to just 28 percent for New Democracy. A Nazi-inspired party, Golden Dawn, trailed with just under 7 percent.

Pro-democracy activists in Bangkok have defied the military government's ban on protests, staging a march through the Thai capital to commemorate the ninth anniversary of a coup against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra that triggered an era of political instability and resulted in a second army takeover last year.

Within a day of becoming the latest focus of Europe's migrant crisis, Croatia has attracted some 20,000 refugees, while hundreds more are starting to trickle into neighboring Slovenia as they make their way toward the northern EU states.

The influx of so many people into the Balkan nation of just over 4 million people has strained relations with Hungary, which closed its border with Serbia earlier this week by stepping up patrols and stringing razor wire, causing desperate refugees to choose alternate crossing points.

Pope Francis arrives in Cuba on Saturday, where he will hold Mass and visit with President Raul Castro ahead of a six-day tour of several U.S. cities, a meeting with President Obama and a speech to a joint meeting of Congress.

Japan's upper house of parliament has approved unprecedented measures that clear the way for the country to deploy troops abroad for the first time since World War II, a move pushed hard by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The ruling party faced three days of intense debate over the measures to circumvent Japan's post-war pacifist constitution, allowing its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to operate overseas.

NPR has learned that four Russian attack aircraft have landed in Syria as part of an effort by Moscow to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad against Islamic State militants.

Pentagon Correspondent Tom Bowman says the Sukhoi jets, known by the NATO designation "Flanker" have been deployed at a forward operating base at Latakia, on the Mediterranean coast, along with four attack helicopters and four transport planes. Moscow plans to dispatch more aircraft, Tom says.

Taliban militiamen attacked an air force base in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 29 people, including more than a dozen attending Friday prayers at a mosque inside the military compound, but there are reports that the death toll could be higher.